I saw this recently on FamilySearch – English Genealogy: Finding Historical Documents in England: https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/english-historical-documents/.
If you have English roots, you can search a variety of English historical documents to learn about your ancestors’ identities and stories. Since the 1830s, England has kept civil registration records of residents’ births, marriages, and deaths. Census records showing entire families exist as far back as the 1840s. Even further back, you may find relatives in parish registers and other kinds of records. Start with these three kinds of records to build your English family tree.
English Censuses
English census records provide glimpses into ancestral households every 10 years between 1841 and 1911. You can often follow a relative’s appearance in censuses from adulthood, living with a spouse and children, back in time to childhood, living with parents and siblings. These records may help you reconstruct entire family groups with their names and approximate places and dates of birth.
–snip–
English Parish Records
Local parishes of the Church of England began keeping baptismal, marriage, and burial records beginning in 1538. Many of the earliest records haven’t survived, and those that have survived may not be complete. But they are the next place to look for historical evidence about an ancestor’s life or family. In addition to original registers kept by parishes, bishop’s transcripts of those registers may also exist (between 1598 and about 1860). Look for both types of records, which may include unique details.
–snip–
More English Historical Documents
Censuses, civil registrations, and parish records are just three types of historical documents in which information about your ancestors may appear. As you learn more about the identities of your ancestors, you may also successfully discover information about them in other common records, such as electoral registers, various kinds of death records, and millions of digitized newspaper pages available on subscription websites findmypast.com or the British Newspaper Archives. Find free advice and instruction on tracing English ancestors in the FamilySearch wiki.
–snip–
I will need to use these!!
Do you have any idea where I should start the hunt in the British West Indies? My grandfather was born in the islands and immigrated from St. Kitts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If you haven’t, you need to sign up for a free account on FamilySearch – https://www.familysearch.org/. While all of the items are free if they are hosted at FamilySearch, any that are not hosted on FamilySearch, but are linked to other sites – GenealogyBank, Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast will require being a paid member of those sites.
Once you register on FamilySearch, click on Search or FamilyTree. Search -> Records is probably better unless someone has worked on your family. You can add British West Indies in the search field for location.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are welcome. If you have questions, I can try to answer them. Haven’t done much with non-U. S. searches as most of my ancestors were far enough back, the records don’t exist or are associated with names like John Smith.
LikeLiked by 1 person